The evening in the Cairngorms wasn't darkness but a rich velvety indigo dotted with stars as jagged as fragmented quartz. The psychic tempest sparked by Bryn-4's panic had subsided, leaving an echoing quiet in the mind and a stronger aroma of ozone and crushed heather lingering in the atmosphere. The young elf subject rested unconscious between them a quiet witness, to narrowly avoided catastrophe.
Felicya Auroras trackers advanced quietly carrying a stretcher their grey-green shapes ghostlike, in the light. She knelt down attaching a diagnostic sensor to Bryn-4s temple moving with precision her expression one of measured concern. The delicate alliance remained intact. The subject was retrieved safely without injury. It was a triumph of practicality.
That was where it was supposed to finish.
The initial sound wasn't a gunshot. Instead it was a damp thud that shattered the silence. One of Felicya's trackers grasping the stretcher handle convulsed abruptly as a thorny appendage—a dart of hardened darkness—burst from his chest. He glanced down bewildered then collapsed into the heather.
From the edge of the forest chaos broke out quiet yet lethal.
They weren't orcs. Their motion carried a deadliness—smooth, winding and completely quiet. Their shapes were hidden beneath camouflaging outfits that absorbed the starlight. The shine of jagged knives and the subtle sulfur-like scent of demonkind pheromones betrayed them unmistakably. D.M.N. Shadows.
"They've arrived for the target!" Alexas tone broke through the silence, sharp and precise. She was, in motion already her cloak fluttering as she pulled out a high-frequency pulse pistol concealed beneath it.
Orsus-12 required no orders. With a growl echoing through the glen he settled into a defensive posture over the passed-out Bryn-4 shielding him with his own body. A Shadow sprang toward him blade targeting a tendon. Orsus-12 didn't evade. He absorbed the slash on his forearm—a wound leaking dark blood—and seized the attacker's wrist breaking bone and hurling the man against a nearby pine tree, with a brutal snap.
However there were ones. Six possibly eight. Their goal wasn't merely to kill; they aimed to retrieve something. Two charged toward the stretcher, disregarding Orsus-12, their objective unmistakable.
Felicyas last tracking device launched a -dampening shot. It hit a Shadow in the shoulder. The man wobbled, his figure shimmering. Stayed upright—his demonic enhancements probably offering defense against neural strikes. He responded by shooting a pistol that needles of crystallized poison.
"Hold your position!" Alexa shouted, firing her pulse pistol. The shot wasn't fatal. The shockwave sent a Shadow stumbling gaining a precious moment. She was a tactician, not a frontline warrior. She acted with ruthless efficiency leveraging the environment exploiting the disorder.
Felicya wasn't struggling. She was directing. She had pulled a gadget from her belt—a sphere made of brass and copper. She thrust it into the peat. A wave of light, perceptible only to those, with enhanced vision or psychic awareness spread outward. It was an "Empathic Dissonance Field." To the Shadows it wouldn't inflict pain. A sharp overpowering feeling of unease—the forest refusing them the very atmosphere turning antagonistic. It caused their actions to waver their targeting to slip.
It also swept through Orsus-12 and Alexa. The orc growled, more shaking his head his endurance battling the dizziness. Alexa experienced a wave of nausea an impulse to escape. She suppressed it jaw clenched.
The brief disorientation proved sufficient. Orsus-12 took control. With one hand he gripped the stretcher carrying Bryn-4 and with the other lifted a stone as large, as a human skull. He threw it—not at a Shadow—. At the tilt-rotor aircraft positioned thirty yards distant. It hit the fuselage with a clang.
The pre-arranged signal.
Inside the aircraft's hull, a second O.R.C. Agent— a sniper Magnus had expressly demanded—began shooting. Not using bullets. Hyper-velocity tranquilizer darts crafted to pierce the dermal thickness of demonkin. Two Shadows collapsed, convulsing.
The D.M.N. Strike was exact. It relied on a weak recovery effort rather, than a strong coordinated defense. The empathic barrier, the orcs protection and the concealed sniper formed a lethal trio they had not anticipated.
Their chief, a person taller than the others produced a sharp clicking noise, with his tongue. A call to withdraw. The surviving Shadows disappeared into the forest carrying two of their dead along. Moments later all that lingered were the breeze and the dense aroma of blood, ozone and trampled heather.
The glen appeared as a scene of brutality. An E.L.F. Tracker lay dead in a widening puddle. Another was injured, holding a leg pierced by a needle. Orsus-12 bled from severe cuts his breath visible in the chilly air yet his posture remained steady his hold, on the stretcher unwavering.
Felicya loomed above her agent her expression ghostly pale. Her gaze was not, on the corpse itself. Fixed on the dark fading tendril that had ended his life—a hallmark of a D.M.N. Weapon. "Walker " she murmured, the name carrying a curse.
Alexa moved to stand beside her the pulse pistol still vibrating in her grasp. "He was tracking the explosion. He noticed a chance. Not to assist. To obtain a specimen.. To remove a competitors asset amid the turmoil." She gazed at Felicya her blue eyes steely. "Your plea, for aid prevented the target from falling to him.. It also attracted his attention. No actions remain uncontaminated now."
Felicya at last diverted her eyes from the body. The dread, in her eyes was quickly overtaken by a concentrated rage. The flawlessness of her world had not merely been broken; it had been brutally shattered. Blood drenched the heather roots. "This constitutes an act of war.. Unmistakable."
"An act of chance " Alexa amended, her fury a subdued flame. ". A warning. He doesn't fear us. He doesn't fear this 'alliance.'" She glanced at Orsus-12, who was watching over the elf. "We have to act. Immediately. Before he concludes a second try is justified."
United in a quiet collaboration born from abrupt aggression they withdrew. The deceased tracker was swiftly placed on board with urgency. The injured received attention. Orsus-12 declined a med-kit until Bryn-4 was secured in a restraint couch.
As the tilt-rotor ascended into the night sky speckled with stars departing from the glen the two chairwomen remained seated in the trembling compartment with the unconscious bodies of their subjects resting between them. The cabin was now filled with the aroma of blood.
"The combined inquiry is a sham " Felicya stated, her tone empty. "He never cared about uncovering the truth, behind the leak. He was the source of it.. Now this."
"Hes engaged in a different game " Alexa concurred, brushing a streak of dark blood—foreign to her—from her face. "A game where the entire nation is the board and the elements are terror and disorder." She turned to Felicya, her strategist explaining the situation. "Your proposal to Arthur. It must go beyond stability for political protection. We require a treaty. An official agreement. E.L.F., O.R.C., A.G.L. Not, as allies. Functioning as a fortress Windsor has proclaimed itself the adversary of all three."
Felicya locked eyes with her the compassion visible now hardened into a determined focus she normally applied to stubborn data. The blood, on the heather had nourished a root. "A three-way alliance " she whispered. "To oppose the Shadow Pact."
The aircraft banked towards the south. Below, the dark Highlands swallowed the evidence of the clash. But up here, in the thrumming metal belly, a new alignment was born—not in a sterile Sanctum, but in the shared, violent aftermath of an ambush. The Balance of Terrible Power had just been violently, irrevocably, tilted. And the first blood of their secret war, soaking into the Scottish peat, was a dark promise of more to come.